Month: February 2010

“Just what comprises humanism is not a simple matter for analysis. Rationality is an indispensable part to be be sure, yet humanity includes emotionality, or the capacity to feel and suffer, to know pleasure, and it includes the capacity for aesthetic satisfaction … his aspiration to feel significant and to have a sense of belonging in a world that is productive of much frustration. These at least are the properties of humanity.”

-Richard Weaver, “Language Is Sermonic,” (1963)

Apparently, all my emotional outbursts, sense of pain and frustration, desire for emotionally satisfying art, and longing for emotional connections outside my own brain DO make me human after all.

On the bus today, I saw a heavy-set black woman with long, slender dreadlocks get on the bus. She was somewhere in her 20’s or 30’s, with a slightly sub-culture tinge to her dress. The only thing that really set her apart from the many other women I’ve seen who look like this was the poorly-applied white-face make-up she wore, like a circular bubble. She proceeded to pull out a ‘zine, and read it for the duration of her 10-block trip.